Current Observatory Equipment

Primary Optical Setup

Celestron CGE1100 11" Schmidt Cassegrain - 2800mm f/10 Carbon Fiber OTA with Starbright XLT Coatings, CGE German Equatorial Mount, HYPERSTAR Hyper-Imaging System - (Converts primary 2800mm f/10 scope to 500mm f/1.8 Imaging System), 9x50 Finder, Telrad Finder, Aluminum Dew Shield, Thousand Oaks Solar Filter, Celestron f/6.3 Focal Reducer, Meade f/3.3 Photographic Focal Reducer, Celestron Eyepiece Projection System, 2" Williams Optics Carbon Fiber Di-Electric Coated Diagonal

Eyepieces

1¼"-4mm Plossl, 1¼-6mm Plossl, 1¼-9mm Plossl, 1¼-15mm Plossl, 2"-19mm AXIOM, 2"-21mm Orion SIRIUS 82°, 1¼"-32mm Plossl, 1¼"-40mm Plossl, Televue 2.5x-Powermate Barlow.

Wide-Field Imager/Guide Scope

AstroTech 80mm Triplet Apochromatic Refractor - 700mm f/6.8 Optical Tube Assembly (OTA) Mounted to CGE1100 with ADM dovetail system and 120mm rings

Astrophotography Gear

CANON EOS 40D 10.1MP DSLR camera modified by Hap Griffin.   This camera will be used mostly as a prime focus image capture device.  The modification consists of removing the factory filter that sits directly in front of the CCD sensor, and replacing it with a custom filter that allows more hydrogen-alpha (Ha) light to reach the sensor.  This can result in much improved imaging of emission nebula whose main source of light is caused by the glowing of hydrogen gas which has been excited by nearby stars and other energy sources.

FujiFilm FinePix S2PRO 12MP DSLR Camera with the following lenses: Sigma 15-30mm f/3.5 Super Wide-Angle, Tokina 28-70mm f/2.8 ATX aspheric, Nikkor 50mm f/1.2, Nikon Auto Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8, Nikon 80-400 f/3.5-4.5 VR, Formula 5 135mm f/1.8, Vivitar 120-600mm f/5.6 Zoom

MEADE DSI (Deep Sky Imager) 510x492 CCD Camera/Auto-Guider with AutoStar Suite Imaging Software

ORION StarShoot II Solar System Imager 1280x1024 Video / Still Camera with MAXIM DL Essentials

ORION StarShoot Auto-Guiding CCD camera

Philips TouCam Pro VGA (640x480) Webcam, Baader UV/IR Pass Filter

Computer Systems

Custom designed and built by Doug Berry - DESKTOP: Intel Pentium 4 - 3.8GHZ Extreme Processor, ABIT IN9 32X MAX Motherboard, 2GB DDR2-1066 RAM, NVIDIA 7850 SLI Graphics Card, 150GB Raptor HDD, 750GB Hitachi HDD, 500GB External SATA Drive, 850w EnerMax Power Supply, HP 20X Dual-Layer LightScribe DVD Drive, Dual Gigabit NIC's, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, 22" Samsung LCD Monitor, Microsoft Windows VISTA 64-bit Operating System, LAPTOP: M-TECH Custom-Built; Intel P4 2.4GHZ Processor, 2GB DDR2-800 RAM, 2-120GB HDD's configured as RAID 0 for 240GB total storage space, 17" 1600x1050 crystal-brite wide-screen display, NVIDIA 6800 Video Card, 12X DVD/CD Burner, Gigabit NIC, Built-in 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Microsoft Windows XP Professional 32-bit Operating System.  Network infrastructure: D-LINK DIR-655 802.11b/g/n Gigabit Router, CAT6 cabling, D-LINK DNS323 NAS Storage System w/2-750GB SATA Hard Drives configured as RAID 1 for data redundancy, VanTech external 500GB E-SATA disk system - Used for additional backup of critical data.

Software

Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Lightroom, TheSKY 6.1, Starry Night Pro Plus 6.2, AIP4WIN, MAXIM CCD, MAXIM DL Essential, ACDSee Pro10, JASC Paint Shop Pro 10, Nebulosity, PHD Guiding, Deep Sky Stacker, Registax 2.0, Startrails, ImagesPlus 3.0, Noise Ninja 2.0, NEAT Image 2.0

Eyepieces - 4mm, 6mm, 9mm, 15mm, 32mm, 40mm Celestron Plossl,  21mm Orion Stratus 2"  82°, 15mm Celestron AXIOM 2" 65°, 5mm ADP Super-Planetary, 12mm Celestron Illuminated Photometric/Guiding, Televue 2.5x Imagemate Barlow, Celestron 2x Super Multi-Coated Barlow, Televue ImageMate 4x Barlow